Ruth+Fragale

On February 8, 1919, Ruth Adelle Cochran Fragale, a 20-year-old clerk, died at her home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Clesta M. Cochran, and her sister, Delorous F. Mischler, said that Ruth had taken ill on Sunday, February 2, but had insisted that she was not sick enough to need a doctor.

Because Ruth had gotten much sicker, Clesta sent for Dr. Thomas C. VanHorne on February 4. He was caring for her, with her mother and her sister by her side, when she told him that she'd used instruments on herself to try to cause an abortion on February 1 and 2 after an attempt about two weeks earlier had failed. VanHorne continued to attend to Ruth daily until peritonitis finally killed her, leaving her husband, Frank, widowed.

Ruth had been a singer and a pianist, though at the time of her death she was employed as a clerk.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].



 For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

 Sources: 
 * Coroner Summary191902-090
 * Pennsylvania death certificate #13872
 * Death notices, //Pittsburgh Press//, Feb. 9, 1919 & //Pittsburgh Post//, Feb. 9, 1919

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